So get up get, get get down. M-O-M is a joke in my town. (Or would you prefer some Rodney Dangerfield?)

Mike and Robbie are good kids. They’re sweet, caring and funny. They’re also 4 and almost 5 and I think I’m going to have to sell them on eBay™.

I tell them no, and they laugh. I get mad, they laugh. I attach real consequences to their misbehavior, and they laugh. The fuckers.

The real problem is that they’re a team.

As in “tag-team.” I love that they have each other’s support, and I truly hope that follows them through their life. In fact, I had previously set fostering this close bond as a personal goal of mine. But now I’m not so sure that was a good idea.

I’m going to need some serious help once Chip gets assimilated into the BoyBorg. It is going to get ugly.

We don’t spank, which is too bad. That would be such an easy answer! Mr. Plain could go either way on the issue, but I was spanked as a child. It made me despise the spanker, not learn a lesson. Well, not the lesson that was intended. So we don’t spank.

So what do we do?

I guess we don’t spoil them enough, because I can’t think of a big enough ‘neat thing’ to take away as a punishment. They only get dessert on special occasions, so I can’t take that away. They can play for hours with a piece of string they find under the couch, so I can’t give timeouts to special toys. We don’t do any particularly special outings that I could cancel.

What if punishment isn’t the answer?

Maybe I’m going about this all wrong. Maybe I just need to sit down with them, mom-to-boy and have a “real” conversation. Explain to them what the problem is and then they’ll grasp the logic of it. And…

No, that’s obviously not going to work. So I don’t know. I’m kind of out of ideas. Oh wait, what worked last night was bedtime 30 minutes early. Because the little delinquents don’t know how to tell time.

With my girls, time out is usually laughable. Usually taking away a privilege or toy is the key to disciplining my 4 1/2 year old. But the 23 month old? Oy. My problem is inconstency.

And I have spanked, unfortunately, when at my wit’s end (like when my oldest daughter was 2 and ran toward a busy parking lot while I was about 7 months pregnant and had to waddle/run after her chunky butt.)

My husband and I tried a combination of things becasue for whatever reason one way would only work for so long. The best was to put him in the corner for x amount of minutes. When he was 3 it was 3 minutes. 4 it was for minutes. and so on. Time out was a joke for him and I didn’t like to spank him. It broke my heart to try so the corner was the best solution for us. Good luck!

My boys are 3 and 4 and I have the same problem. All I ever talked about was how important it was to me that they be close. Now I am regretting that – kind of… I give them time outs away from each other. Of course, I have to go through the usual 5 minutes of them trying to make each other laugh even if they are on opposite ends of the house. Then I just duck tape their mouths and things are fine. Ok, so I really don’t do that, but after awhile of my resetting their time out clock they get the point. Good luck, I know how frustrating it can be!

I SO feel your pain. Mr. Schmitty and I have just started a new “punishment”. We decided that if they wanted to misbehave and do something we didn’t like we were going to have them make it up to us. As a punishment they would have to do something FOR us. Fold the towels in the dryer, empty the dishwasher, sweep the floor, anything that was age appropriate. It didn’t matter what was going on at the time, a playdate, a show on tv, on the way to a party, they had to do something to help us out right then and there. Needless to say, they don’t like it….so I must say their behavior has improved! :)

As the [usually] happy father of 4 children, I’ll freely admit screaming is sometimes involved when we’ve reached the end of our rope. The occasional smack on the thigh isn’t unheard of but is very rare. GameBoys and DVDs disappear often.

It is SO tempting to force chores on them, but heck – half the reason we HAD them was to do chores as a matter of living :) So that’s out as punishment.

Now for a family of soccer nuts, well, we have been known to threaten them with giving us their uniforms. Actually happened once and was like the end of the world. Needless to say they got the uniform back after a week of excellent behavior, but the threat of the uber punishment is always there. Just depends what your kids value.

Oh and anyone who tells you they can raise their kids without some bribery here or there – only has one :)